Lusitania (Archaeology)

"A rede viária que servia as ligações terrestres entre a capital provincial e o seu porto marítimo representa um importante eixo de circulação no território lusitano. Embora este não seja um tema ignorado pela investigação arqueológica, faltam leituras de síntese, baseadas em dados arqueológicos, que permitam articular os diferentes estudos que têm sido feitos à escala nacional / regional e, sobretudo, que ignorem a fronteira entre os actuais estados ibéricos.
O trabalho que se apresenta pretende sistematizar a informação disponível sobre as vias que se dirigiam a ocidente a partir de Augusta Emérita em direcção a Olisipo, acrescentando alguns dados inéditos e reflexões decorrentes dos trabalhos desenvolvidos pelos autores nas regiões de Mérida, Badajoz, Elvas, Monforte e Fronteira.
São apresentadas propostas de traçado para as vias referenciadas no Itinerário de Antonino para esta área do conuentus emeritensis, reconhecendo o seu carácter de abordagem preliminar já que este trabalho se assume como ponto de partida de um projecto mais abrangente que os autores pretendem desenvolver."

O projeto de “Recuperação e Musealização das Fábricas
Romanas” de Sines, executado pela Câmara Municipal de
Sines e atualmente em curso, permitiu reconhecer novos
contextos arqueológicos de cronologia romana. O presente
artigo descreve alguns dados preliminares sobre os trabalhos
arqueológicos realizados entre julho de 2017 e maio de 2018.
No Largo João de Deus, entre duas fábricas de preparados de peixe já conhecidas, foram identificados dois fornos metalúrgicos de redução e um forno de produção (forja). A sudoeste da Fábrica A, detetou-se um forno de produção cerâmica. A ocupação industrial do sítio envolvia a
coexistência dessas três atividades.

ABSTRACT

GALLAECIA GOTHICA: FROM CONSPIRACY OF DUX ARGIMUNDUS (589/590 AD) TO INTEGRATION IN THE VISIGOTHIC KINGDOM OF TOLEDO.
The rebellion of the dux Argimundus was one of the most delicate moments of the reign of Reccared. We have no precise details of how the plot unfolded but certainly the throne was seriously threatened: the John of Biclaro’s Chronicle underline the seriousness of this threat expounding on punishment suffered by the rebel and his accomplices. All this topped with a lapidary phrase with John of Biclaro closes its chronic (et docuit famulos dominis non esse superbos). This categorical condemnation of the attempted overthrow King is unmatched by any other uprisings narrated throughout the pages of his chronicle. It gives us an idea of transcendence that John of Biclaro gave it in his story. The fact that the Biclarensis mentions that Argimundus was not only a member of the Aula Regia but also dux prouinciae, the name of the rebel, the Gallaecia situation and the circumstance of being a newly conquered province, and last, the parallel with the revolt of the Duke Paulus regarding modus operandi and subsequent punishment, are arguments that incline us to think that of dux Argimundus complot was not just a palace conspiracy, but a genuine revolt of the province of Gallaecia that could have ruined the political work built by Leovigild and Reccared. This interpretation confirms an old hypothesis defended decades ago by the Portuguese historian A. M. de Faria, who, based on the study of numismatics Reccared’s reign, suggested that this attempt of usurpation would have taken place in Gallaecia.
However, due to the inaccuracy of our source, it is difficult to prove what the ultimate goal of the dux Argimundus was: if Reccared overthrow the Visigothic throne or, conversely, to restore the old Suebian kingdom in Gallaecia. Some indications seem to suggest rather the latter. First, the province had recently conquered thanks in part to a clash between two factions of the Suebic nobility, and the rebel could belong one of them. Secondly, there is the deafening silence of Biclarensis on the development of the facts, silence that contrasts with the details that contributes to other similar events. And finally, we are inclined to believe in this option the way the rebels were punished, with a final ride on the back of a donkey through the streets of Toledo, in a kind of mock triumph or parody ceremony investiture, which certainly seems more akin to a military triumph than a palace conspiracy. These, in general, were solved with a series of summary trials and subsequent execution of the sentence, as we have seen in the case of conspiracies of Segga in Merida and Uldila in Toledo. In this regard, significantly, in our opinion, the punishment inflicted Argimundus is virtually identical to suffer years after dux Paulus after his unsuccessful revolt in Septimania. Through the study of Onomastic, we propose in this paper the hypothesis of a Suebian origin of dux Argimundus and his possible relationship to the Suebian royal dynasty as well as the possibility that the news transmitted by John of Biclaro hide actually an attempt to restore the Suebian kingdom of Gallaecia.
In our own point of view, the importance of the rebellion of dux Argimundus is mainly to be seen as the beginning of a phenomenon that marks the future of Gallaecia in Visigothic times: the militarization of the Duchy. An analysis of the various literary and archaeological sources that we have been doing confirms the idea that the incorporation of old Suebian kingdom to the Visigoth kingdom of Toledo not has been as peaceful and complete as described in unison the chronicles of the time. On the contrary it seems clear that it was a long and gradual process, alternating with difficulties and successes, which resulted in a significant military presence in the area. In relation with this matter, we also discussed here geography Leovigild’s military campaigns in the Northwest aimed at the conquest of the Suebian kingdom of Gallaecia and location of the territory inhabited by the Ruccones and the Aregenses mountains, whose location is today discussed. We propose here that the Ruccones of the Visigothic literary sources will be identified with old Luggones, an ethnic group related to the ancient Astures, who should inhabit the current region of Bierzo (province of León). And we also propose that the Aregenses mountains will be located in Cabrera’s montains, around the river Eria valley, in the border between de current provinces of León and Zamora.
Definitely Visigothic conquest prompted the province to acquire a strong military character, which would explain the emergence of a strong Suebian-Gothic aristocracy eventually get done with the reins of power and held power in Toledo during second half of 7th Century. In a certain sense, it can be assumed to Gallaecia a situation not unlike of Septimania, but in this case its closeness of Merovingian and Burgundian realms provokes a greater risk and greater chance of success on holdup, hence the need to place in front of Duchy nobles with blood ties with the ruling dynasty.
Anyway, and similar to the Narbonensis case, it seems that Gallaecia was considered a foreign body within the Visigoth kingdom of Toledo. As underlined by one author is highly significant that chronic of Alfonso III of Oviedo mentions the kingdom of the Suebi a century and a half after its conquest. The literary sources, in fact, suggest the existence of a certain feeling of uniqueness in Visigothic Gallaecia that would have kept alive well into the Middle Ages. The heavy militarization of the territory and the enormous power accumulated by his aristocratic circle will make up an important faction within the Visigothic nobility. As mentioned, unlike Narbonensis, geographic isolation of Gallaecia and the impossibility of having foreign allies difficult here any attempt of usurpation, but instead it served to tie important kinship between the Suebian nobility and Gothic one. This should further strengthen the personality of the territory and give it some political content that will hatch in the Middle Ages. In any case, the situation experienced by Gallaecia and Narbonensis during the Visigoth period will have a certain parallel with the events that followed the Arab conquest at 711 with a Kingdom of Asturias isolated and left to their fate and some counties of Septimania and Northern Tarraconensis willing to agree with the Franks. In this sense, if the Galician origin of kings who occupied the throne Toledo in the second half of the seventh Century will confirmed, the mechanisms that led to the emergence of a core of political and military domination of Islamic resistance in the Northwestern area of the Iberian Peninsula would better understand.

This paper tried to frame the urban reality of Toletum within the overall process of transformation that participated Hispanic and other cities in the Western Mediterranean during the Late Antiquity. The urban landscape of Toletum inherited from the roman city was altered or modified, while there was a reorganization and new concept of the ancient suburbium, its spaces, its buildings and its functions. As a long–range phenomenon, Christianity was from the IVth century one of the decisive elements in the society and urban’s transformation. And few centuries later, the consolidation of the Visigoth capital was also particular consequences in spatial planning and structuration of the new public, representation and private space. The episcopal and royal evergetism contributed to the development of a new architecture that set a special topography of urban and suburban landscape, which is conjugated civil architecture with the so–called Christian itinerary or sacred liturgy.

The stratigraphic contexts identified in the archaelogical survey in Rua de S. Mamede proved
to be very substantial for the understanding of solid residues and waste disposals as transformation
agents of the urban landscape, in a high slope area located between two public
equipment’s of Felicitas Iulia Olisipo: the theatre and the scarcely known “Termas dos Cássios”.
The diversity, coherency and chronological consistency witnessed by the different artefact
assemblages recovered on the site is of particular importance for the reconstitution of trade in
the Olisipo region and its integration in the commercial circuits of the Roman provincial world.
Although regional-scale assemblages are preponderant, import assemblages are also
present, indicating an intense circulation of food supply products and fine wares. Its study allowed to observe a landfill construction phase roughly located between the
terminus of the Julio-Claudian period /start of the Flavian period and the beginning of
the 2nd quarter of the 2nd century (70-125 AD).

The aim of this project is the archaeological knowledge of the architectural ensembles of religious character (church and funeral) that marked the landscape of cities and their territoria in the Iberian Peninsula during the Late Antiquity and later the survival of the cultural heritage of the classical world during the Umayyad period of al-Andalus.
The new archaeological data relating to urbanism and architecture of prestige, civil and sacred, of the Late Antiquity and post 711 period are a key to overcoming the impact of the traditional historiographical approach advocated by the existence of a discontinuity and rupture of cultural landscapes between the two periods, distorting the physical interpretation and understanding of the urban phenomenon in the first Andalusian period and relegated to a secondary level the common Roman heritage in the Mediterranean which survived in the Islamic period in the West.
A significant monuments of late antique ecclesiastical character is located at the site of Paço dos Bispos (“Palace of Bishops”) of Idanha-a-Velha (old Igaeditanorum ciuitas) (Fig. 1). The 7th century episcopium of Egitania has been located in the southwest intramural and it is comprises by several phases corresponding to different buildings. There are two baptisteries and several buildings that were excavated between 1954 and the end years of the 20th century.
We have addressed a multidisciplinary study of the urban landscape of ancient Egitania. One of our methodological priorities has been the application of the provisions of the Archaeology of Architecture and Remote Sensing. As a result of this, in 2012 it has been detected with a laser scanner and GPS some architectural elements, getting a new mapping and the lifting of the elevations of the existing walls. We also perform a flight with a drone, which has generated two reservoir orthophotos and 3D modeling. In the 2014 excavation campaign two naves were opened in the south and north of a building which we interpret as a possible chapel or oratory memory of the Episcopal group. It is a rectangular construction longitudinally divided into three narrow naves (about 2 m wide and 16 m long), two rows of supports which are preserved five sections of arches east-west.
The archaeological excavation confirmed that the pillars of stones with archery and footings belong to a building of Late Antiquity and Early Medieval chronology (7-8th centuries). On the one hand, they are affected by a silo of Andalusian chronology (survey 1), and secondly, support and/or cover levels of Late Roman Empire (survey 2).
In the survey 1 has proceeded to drain clogging of a silo, then used as landfill powerful, slow and progressive training, and a wide Medieval-Islamic chronology by the presence of atypical common, varnished and glazes ceramics. Although it has noted here or in other areas intramural no structure associated with a domestic occupation of Andalusian period.
The ceramic assemblage –with about 300 fragments– is both diverse and homogeneous, showing a pattern of local/regional productions of ceramics between about the 9th and 11th centuries. They can generally be ascribed to everyday containers for kitchen and table, storage, lighting and transportation.
The Andalusian landfill also had a significant collection of 1126 remains mammalian fauna which has been practiced its mandatory archaeozoological analysis. There is a great representation of domestic species (35%) as Bos taurus, Equus caballus, Ovis aries/Capra hircus, and among wild animals have been documented lagomorphs (2.7%), Cervus elaphus (12%) and Sus Scrofa. Brands have been observed associated with the dismantling pits of some bones, after being used for different functions (production of wool, milk, transport, etc.) were used for food and meat purposes, thus having a complete amortization.
Some samples from the filling sediment of the northern profile (UU.EE. 11 and 14) were also taken. Pollen analysis reflects a high level of organic matter, which led to proliferate fungi, indicating that was slowly filling with very local sediment.
Another area that would be part of the Egitanian episcopium, perhaps a palatium of Bishops, is masked in the factory of the See of Idanha-a-Velha, that, in its present form, is a reconstruction of the late Middle Ages of a church of the 12th century. The aspect that has attracted the most attention and controversy by specialists is its distribution in three naves with a northeast-southwest direction of the main shaft, which is not canonically set or a Christian or an Islamic temple.
Claudio Torres did not hesitate to give this unique building a religious use during the Visigoth and Andalusian periods, first as a church, later as a mosque. Some of the arguments are based on a southwest facing qibla hypothetical common orientation in al-Andalus, much like a series of close parallels, and the architectural plan, comparable to that drawn by the Great Mosque of Damascus.
Manuel Luis Real, relying on the temporary conquest of the place by Alfonso III and the supposed restoration of the diocese of Egitania builds its proposal for a renovated late 9th or early 10th century.
Nevertheless, is no doubt that both positions have been built as historiographical proposals without archaeological references. In fact, others scholars deny the liturgical use of this construction and prefer consider a civil order, perhaps a palace, objecting to its use as a mosque. Little more can bring about their archaeological interpretation and functionality, since there is no material or structural or epigraphic evidence to raise its use as a mosque. Some of the items inside, including the presence of a well, provide certain optimum qualities to be engaged inside the Koranic worship. But it must be noted that no structural change that they confirm is observed, except for the late medieval adaptations, the building is clearly from the seventh century.
After 711 the previous episcopal structure would break, creating a new model of organization and structuring of the territory, where Idania, Exitania or Antaniya capital Kura counted at least four districts or iqlim, take his own place on the border lower in the southern part of Garb al-Andalus (West Iberian Peninsula). Perhaps it was controlled by Abd al-Aziz, son of Musa, who managed the western territory of the peninsula. The long episode of riots staged by Ibn Marwan was the cause of the destruction of Idahna, rather than Marwan restore itself to transform the city into their residence.
The ceramic registration documented in the excavation of the silo, with materials attached to the 11th century, suggests that it may result in a farmhouse of suburban type, residual inhabited by human groups dedicated to agriculture and livestock, and located within the boundaries of Santarém and Mérida.

La guerra constituyó un elemento primordial para las sociedades que habitaron la península ibérica durante la Protohistoria, un elemento que se proyectaba en múltiples dimensiones, desde la legitimación política y la afirmación étnica, a la actividad económica, la identidad individual o la transmisión de conocimientos. Es por ello que comprender lo bélico es ineludible para conocer la Antigüedad, y así dedicamos el tercer volumen de nuestros Cuadernos de Historia Militar a la guerra y los guerreros de la antigua Iberia. El desarrollo de la arqueología del conflicto y las modernas aproximaciones a la historia militar permiten superar las ajadas interpretaciones basadas en la lectura acrítica de las fuentes literarias grecorromanas, y posibilita ofrecer esta síntesis actualizada, en la que se dan la mano conocimiento arqueológico y análisis histórico para arrumbar tópicos repetidos ad nauseam como el de la sempiterna guerrilla. Guerreros de la antigua Iberia se estructura analizando las diferentes sociedades que poblaron la antigua Iberia, un mosaico de pueblos cuyas prácticas militares fueron diversas y cambiantes a lo largo del tiempo, desde la lucha de campeones a las batallas campales en orden cerrado, desde los certeros honderos baleares a los lusitanos ágiles como el viento, para desembocar en el servicio auxiliar hispano que nutrió las legiones de Roma.

Índice INTRODUCCIÓN 13 1. PROYECTO IDAVE 19 1.1. OBJETIVOS DE LA INVESTIGACIÓN 21 1.2. PLANTEAMIENTO METODOLÓGICO 24 2. CONTEXTO HISTÓRICO Y ARQUEOLÓGICO 35 2.1. CIUITAS IGAEDITANORUM 35 2.2. LA SEDE EPISCOPAL DE EGITANIA Y SU ENTORNO 43 3. HISTORIOGRAFÍA 51 4. ACTUACIÓN ARQUEOLÓGICA EN EL PAÇO DOS BISPOS 59 4.1. METODOLOGÍA 59 4.2. INTERPRETACIÓN. NUEVA LECTURA ARQUEOLÓGICA 68 4.2.A. PRIMER ESTABLECIMIENTO CRISTIANO 69 4.2.B. ESPACIO EPISCOPAL 70 5. PERSPECTIVAS DE ESTUDIO 105 6. SUMMARY · RÉSÚMÉ · RIASSUNTO 111 BIBLIOGRAFÍA 121

El MNAR ha celebrado en este año 2021 sus XXXV años de existencia en la nueva sede, casi tantos cómo números de la Revista Anas están ya en la calle. Y ello ha sido posible por el decidido empeño de numerosas personas e instituciones que han acompañado tanto al Museo como a su revista en estos decenios. El impulso, entusiasmo y seguimiento constante de su fundador J. Mª Álvarez Martínez, el trabajo de su secretario J.L. de la Barrera así como el compromiso desinteresado de los miembros de su Consejo de Redacción lo hicieron posible. A todos ellos nuestro sincero agradecimiento por su entrega para con el proyecto, como personalmente les hice saber y reitero en estas líneas.

El mausoleo tardorromano de Las Vegas es uno de los edificios funerarios más singulares de Hispania durante la Antigüedad Tardía. Sus características constructivas y el hallazgo de un sarcófago figurado con los apóstoles in situ lo convierten en un unicum. Tras 4 décadas de silencio, se ha puesto en marcha un proyecto de puesta en valor cuyos trabajos están ofreciendo nuevas interpretaciones sobre su uso y evolución. De este modo, se realiza un balance del estado del conocimiento que se tenía sobre el mismo y se ofrecen nuevos datos obtenidos a raíz de las últimas intervenciones desarrolladas.

Te Late Roman mausoleum in Las Vegas is one of the most unique funerary buildings in Hispania during Late Antiquity. Its structural features and the discovery in situ of a figurative sarcophagus with the apostles make it a unicum. Afer four decades of silence, a value assessment project has been started and the field work carried out on site is offering new interpretations about its use and evolution. An evaluation of the knowledge existing about it is made and the new data obtained due to the last work developed is given.

This work focuses on a hardly analysed issue in Roman urbanism studies, namely the drainage of runoff water from streets and public areas. We present the cases of two cities located in the province of Lusitania, Augusta Emerita and Mirobriga, each one representative of two different urban layouts, which are here compared. The first case, the provincial capital, was a Roman colony founded ex novo which had an underground sewer network designed along with the orthogonal city plan. The second, Mirobriga, developed from a pre-Roman oppidum, was a secondary town that did not have a proper drainage infrastructure, that resulted in both rain and wastewater flowing through the paved streets. While the first case study offered a wide range of drains to carry the runoff to the sewers, the second case produced different waterproofing structures designed to protect the buildings from the excess of water flowing on the surface.